“His Man Saturday Through Friday” Swiss Army Man, the perplexing first feature film by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan seems designed to replicate Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890). Shipwrecked and alone, Hank (Paul Dano) is attempting to hang himself outside of a cave on a beach. Just as he ...

“Another Self” In the middle of Mike Cahill’s excellent science-fiction film, Another Earth (2011), a melodramatic story about the discovery of an inhabited identical twin Earth in the solar system, John Burroughs (William Mapother) angrily rebukes the desire of Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) to join an exploratory space flight to the recently discovered planet. Burroughs ...

“Into Darkness, Again” Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson’s startling new film, Room (2015) begins with close-ups of material objects. The camera dwells on crumpled aluminum foil, and the rounded corners of a pinkish porcelain bathroom sink. The opening of the film is thus devoted to textures, the haptic realm that great cinema can sometimes approach, but ...